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Guahu si Harry Potter

In my Chamorro classes that I teach at the University of Guam, I try as much as possible to incorporate what we refer to as “popular culture” into my assignments and exercises. This means as opposed to using examples like “Maria” or “Juan” in drills I might use superheroes like Superman or Thor. It also means I have students use popular figures from films, tv shoes and comics in the dialogues, stories and plays they create. In my CM 101 class, which is Beginning Chamorro 1, I have them fill out introduction sheets in Chamorro, where they provide basic information about themselves. It includes things they like, what they are studying, where they live and so on.

After they present it to the class, I have them do another sheet for a random fictional character of their choice. This semester, some people introduced Katniss from The Hunger Games, others Peter Parker, who is better known as Spider-Man, . and Luke Skywalker from Star Wars. Here is one of my favorites presented by a student, introducing Harry Potter, from the series that bears his name: